


I Swear That I'll Be Around

by caulk_ur_wagon



Series: A Loop Collapsed [1]
Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: And also made Ted Deb's dad, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, But I still wanted to post this, Combined it with the theory that Ted is Oliver's dad, Gen, I adapted from the theory that Hot Chocolate Boy is Oliver Green, I know Ted's age doesn't match canon but shhh it's fine, Light Charlotte/Ted but it's not the main focus, My First Work in This Fandom, That have mostly been ruined by Nightmare Time, This is largely based on theories I had post Black Friday, so there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caulk_ur_wagon/pseuds/caulk_ur_wagon
Summary: Ted was never one to settle down. He didn't like relationships and he didn't want to be tied down, so an unplanned pregnancy definitely threw him for a loop. In a move shocking everyone that knew him, he asked for shared custody. Time to try to be a better dad than his own. Twice.
Relationships: Alice/Deb (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals), Charlotte/Ted (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals)
Series: A Loop Collapsed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998433
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	I Swear That I'll Be Around

**Author's Note:**

> This was born of a combination of the theory that Hot Chocolate Boy is Oliver Green, that Ted is Oliver's dad, and my own personal headcanon that Ted is Deb's dad. There is no evidence for that last one, I just like it. I also incorporated in a few theories I had post-Black Friday that have since been destroyed by Nightmare Time, but I wanted to finish and post it anyway. I know Ted's age doesn't match canon but shhh it's fine.

Ted was never one to settle down. Not in relationships, anyway. It’d been like that since his first girlfriend in his freshman year of high school. Emotion made him uncomfortable, and the thought of having to _share_ his emotions with someone was even worse. So he kept his romantic prospects at an arms-length, and he was happy with that. Naturally, his relationships didn’t last long, considering his lack of attachments, and jumping from girl to girl as quickly as he did had gained him the reputation of a sleaze. To be fair, even he had to admit that he could be a bit of an asshole.

Despite this, he never had trouble picking up girls. Puberty was kind enough to make him reasonably attractive by the end of the summer before sophomore year, and his pretty face made girls inclined to overlook his douchey personality and his inability to make a commitment. Or at least make them decide he was hot enough for them to risk trying to change him. That never worked. So high school was spent with girlfriends that didn’t last more than a month at a time, or, more often, one-off dates that ended with a skeevy hookup in the back of his car.

College was more of the same, but with less guilt about if he left a girl broken-hearted. Unlike high school, most of the girls he hooked up with also had more interest in a fun night or two than a full-fledged relationship. No one in college had any idea what the fuck they were doing at any given time, and for many, including Ted, bringing someone new home every few nights was just stress relief. Just a few drinks, a quick bang at home, maybe a little cuddling, then they were gone in the morning. It was perfect; all the physical benefits of a relationship without all the strings to get tangled up in. 

It seemed, however, that strings were determined to tie him up. A one-night stand from a month or so before showed up at his apartment one night, a plastic baggie with a few pregnancy tests in her hand and a ‘we-need-to-talk’ look in her eyes. He let her in and sat quietly while she said her piece.

Almost every test she took was positive. She had an appointment in a few days to confirm, but she was fairly convinced already. She told him that she had no desire for a relationship and she knew that he didn’t either. That said, she was keeping the baby, and he had no say in that particular detail. She had a fairly decent income and would be just fine on her own, so she was merely informing him as a courtesy. He could have as little or as much involvement as he wanted. 

In a move shocking everyone that had ever known him, Ted asked for shared custody. 

Ted didn’t have a great relationship with his own father. It wasn’t that his old man was cruel or a bad person or anything. Sure he drank sometimes, but Ted couldn’t remember his dad ever being drunk around him or Terry, his brother. He smoked, but he was careful to keep his cigarettes away from the kids, and he never once smoked inside the house or car. Ted remembered getting spanked as a kid, which probably wasn’t great, but it was the 80’s and that was just a thing back then. 

Their strained relationship was due more to the fact that his father just wasn’t home much while he was growing up. His mother had wanted to be a stay-at-home mom while he and his brother were little, so his dad worked long hours to support them all. He’d leave early in the morning before Ted woke up and would usually be back after he’d gone to bed for the night. When he was thirteen, his mom finally went back to work, so his dad was home more, but he quickly realized that his old man really had no idea how to interact with kids. They had little in common and had nothing to talk about. If he was honest, Ted figured he got his emotional constipation from his dad. He had no doubt that his father loved him, but he couldn’t remember his dad ever _saying_ that he did. 

Even as a teenager, Ted never saw himself intentionally settling down with a girl and having kids, but he always swore that if kids were a thing that happened, he would always be around. As much as he pretended to be unaffected by his barely-there relationship with his father, he knew his life would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if they were closer, and he’d be damned if he let his own kids go through the same thing. 

In any case, the girl was happy to comply with his request. For all her talk of being just fine as a single mom, she did seem relieved that she wouldn’t be doing the parenting alone. That was something he could understand; with his own issues with commitment, the thought of raising a kid by himself made him sick. And while he didn’t want a relationship with any of his past flings and _definitely_ hadn’t planned to have kids with any of them, he figured it was at least a good thing that the one that he knocked up was the one whose name he didn’t struggle to remember. Rory was pretty of face and strong of spirit, so her name had stuck with him.

Her appointment confirmed what had already been suspected: she was definitely pregnant, about six weeks along. Ted was at the second appointment a few weeks later, when the first ultrasound happened. A blurry image filled the little screen, and although the doctor pointed out what was supposed to be the baby, he couldn’t quite make out what he was supposed to be looking at. He did, however, hear clear as day when it was announced that there were two heartbeats. Twins ran in Rory’s family, apparently skipping a generation. She herself was an only child, but she had twin uncles, and her great-grandmother had had a twin that died in infancy.

Despite the amount of terror he was feeling at the prospect of two kids, it was pure pride and happiness that misted in his eyes when two strong heartbeats emanated from the speaker, filling the room. They were due in the spring, barely two weeks before he was set to graduate. He’d be twenty-one years old, a fresh university graduate with a mountain of debt and newborn twins. His fifteen-year-old self would’ve laughed at the absurdity. His seventeen-year-old self would be having a panic attack. His present-self was inclined to agree with his seventeen-year-old self. 

The months seemed to speed by, and Ted didn’t go out much anymore. His roommates gave him shit about trading babes for babies every time they came back to the apartment plastered with some equally drunk girl on their arms while he was still sitting in the same spot in the kitchen, alternating between a textbook, a parenting guide, and clipping coupons for infant clothes and furniture from a newspaper, but in all honesty, he didn’t mind. Sure, he missed going to parties, but bars weren’t as fun now that he didn’t need a fake to get in. He had never worried about passing with the best grades, but the head of his department recommended a select few students for a paid internship at a company downtown every year, and now he had just a few months to make a good enough impression to be considered for what would probably be the best paying job he could get with a fresh degree, and he couldn’t study if alcohol was making him see double. For all the shit they gave him, they did chime in their two cents when he and Rory debated names, and they all pitched in for a car seat at the baby shower.

The twins were born a week early, the only time in their lives they’d be early for anything. Ted had been awoken at two in the morning by his roommates, one still in the kitchen writing down whatever information he could get from the person on the other end of the landline while the other two dragged him, half-asleep, from his bed, screaming at him to “ _get your ass up and fucking go, it’s happening!_ ” No amount of coffee could ever have woken him up quicker than hearing those words. A tense drive to the hospital with a lot of speeding and, thankfully, a lack of cops, an argument with a more conservative nurse that, yes, he was the father, and no, they weren’t married, and two hours of profanity-laced labor later, and he was a dad. His daughter was born first, red and screaming, followed minutes later by his son, who scared them all when he was born blue and unmoving. His parenting books had warned him that twins were often born early and that the second one was likely to have some difficulties, but nothing could have prepared him for the helplessness that paralyzed him as his little boy was whisked out of his sight, the doctor shouting orders to the nurses as he worked, or the cheer that erupted from everyone in the delivery room when they managed to extract a cry from the baby.

The babies were cleaned, swaddled, and passed to awaiting arms. The boy had dozed off while he was swaddled and grunted in his sleep from his position on his mother’s chest, his now-pink little face all squished up, but the little girl stared up at her father with wide curious eyes, his finger clutched in a tiny fist. Later, Ted sat in a chair against the wall, filling out the papers for the birth certificates while a nurse taught Rory how to nurse. As they had agreed, the twins would have his last name only. He’d been okay with hyphenating, but Rory’s surname was long and, according to her, “makes my hand cramp up just thinking about it, I’m not getting carpal tunnel at twenty-two just so we both get credit. As long as we name the girl after my grandmother, I’m satisfied.” There hadn’t been too much debate over their son’s name, thankfully. Ted had suggested it and Rory had said it felt right.

He glanced up from his writing, smiling at his kids. Deborah and Oliver Green, ready to kick the world’s ass.

The twins were kept at the hospital for a few days for monitoring, but apart from the initial scare, apparently caused by the cord getting wrapped around Oliver’s neck during delivery, everything was fine, and they were home for the weekend. Ted’s lease wasn’t going to be up until the week after graduation, but he went ahead and began slowly moving in with Rory. That had been the plan; they both had come to the conclusion that caring for newborns would be easier if they were both in the same apartment. So despite the fact that they weren’t romantically involved, Ted began sleeping on Rory’s pull-out sofa, planning to move what he needed into the apartment and put the rest in storage. He’d begin helping out on rent with what he could afford, try to get a decent paying job, and get his own place when the twins were a bit older. 

He thought his previous finals had kicked his ass, but nothing could’ve prepared him from taking the last finals he ever would on three hours of sleep after being up all night with fussy twins. They were hungry all the time it seemed, and while Deborah refused formula, Oliver wouldn’t take a bottle at all, so poor Rory never really got a break. His back ached from sleeping on the pull-out, and that combined with his lack of sleep had Ted feeling hungover without taking even a sip of booze.

But he got through his finals and passed with decent grades. In the end, he didn’t get a recommendation for the internship. A few months of hard work and, admittedly, vast improvement wasn’t enough to put him on par with the students that had worked for it their entire college careers. However, he did receive an email from the professor a few days after finals were graded, telling Ted that he was proud of how far he had come in such a short time, and how he admired that he was trying to do right by his kids, even if they didn’t fit into what he had planned for himself. The professor gave Ted his personal phone number and instruction to use him as a reference when he began applying to jobs. In all honesty, that was practically as much of a one-way ticket to a well-paying job as the internship would’ve been.

Graduation day came, three weeks after the twins were born. His classmates stumbled across the stage, in various levels of hungover, many still buzzed from partying the night before. Ted took his degree, shook hands with the dean, and blew a kiss to his kids in the crowd as he walked down the steps. The twins, almost a month old, were safely snuggled in his own parents’ arms. Rory sat next to them, taking a much-needed breather. 

He knew his parents were hoping he and Rory would fall in love and get married, like some Hallmark movie come to life, but he was sure it wouldn’t happen. Rory was fun, and he could see them staying friends, but he didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him. It was an odd situation, to be sure, but in all honesty, he felt like this was a better situation for the kids. He remembered classmates with divorced parents always being a bargaining chip in their parents’ arguments. Their parents always competed with each other to be the favorite, or would bad-mouth the other in front of the kids. Many of his classmates ended up resenting one or both of their parents. With himself and Rory, there was no bitterness because there was no romantic relationship ruined. There was no competition because there was nothing to compete over. Neither of them would poison the twins’ minds against the other because there was no reason to make the other angry.

Ted and Rory would never marry each other, and they were both perfectly fine with the situation. They would do their best to do right by their kids, and that was all that mattered.

The day went by in a whirl of caps and gowns and photos. His favorite picture from the day was taken right in front of a balloon arch placed just under a sign at the campus entrance. He was grinning ear-to-ear, a baby in each arm. Oliver had fallen asleep chewing on his stole, and Deborah had his tassel clutched tightly in her little fist. 

The twins slept fairly soundly that night after all the excitement of the day. Rory turned in just after they got the twins to sleep. Ted stayed up a little longer, searching for job ads on his laptop. It was hard to wrap his head around the thought of being a dad before he was a college graduate, but here he was, both of those things and looking for a job so he could afford diapers. It wasn’t what he planned, but despite it all, he was happy.

***

The first thing Ted learned about being a parent is that, sometimes, the names you give your children don’t fit them initially. Well, this wasn’t the _first_ thing he learned, per se; that spot was reserved for how _fucking_ _expensive_ babies were, even with the help he was getting from his parents and Terry. Furniture, clothes, diapers, toys, and not to mention hospital bills, the twins were costing a fortune before they’d even been born. They were lucky they were cute. 

But still, he knew somewhat that their names weren’t going to feel ‘real’ at first. When they first come out, babies are squishy and red and don’t look like much of anything. They don’t do much of anything either, apart from eat and shit and scream. There aren’t many names out there that fit that. So, you give them names to grow into. At three months old, the twins hadn’t grown into their names. 

‘Deborah’ was better fitting a strict schoolmarm, not the tiny thing tucked in his arms, chewing his fingers. Oliver seemed more like his name. He was the quiet calm to foil the wild child that was his sister. He was laying peacefully in his father’s other arm, his thumb secured in his mouth, Ted’s ear clutched in his other hand. That said, the name still felt too big for the little guy. 

So nicknames were born. Oliver became ‘Ollie’, while Deborah was ‘Debbie’ or sometimes shortened even further to ‘Deb’. Neither seemed to mind. 

With the recommendation of his professor, Ted didn’t have a hard time finding a decent job. He got hired on as a computer systems analyst at a mid-sized tech company a few weeks after graduation. The pay wasn’t the greatest, definitely not in the caliber of what he’d be making if he had gotten that internship and then been hired by that company, but it was enough that he’d be able to afford a small place for himself and the twins.

He had gotten off for the day just in time to swap with Rory as she headed in for an evening shift. Settled in for a night of dad duty, he snuggled with the kids on the couch, the tv playing a house remodeling show quietly in the background. Not his usual choice of entertainment, but he was apartment hunting and he needed decoration ideas. As comfortable as his last apartment was for a bunch of college students, he figured that wasn’t the best kind of place to raise kids.

He had already decided to search for a two-bedroom apartment to start, and then a three-bedroom as the twins got older. Hopefully, by then he could afford a three-bedroom. Here at Rory’s, the twins were sleeping in what used to be her spare bedroom. She planned on doing the same as him when they were older. Right now, convenience had them share a room, but they’d want their own space soon enough. 

Months passed, the twins grew, and Ted eventually moved out. He still spent most of his time at Rory’s, however. Just because he had found an apartment didn’t mean it was furnished yet. There was stuff that would travel between houses with the twins of course, like diaper bags, toys, and bath stuff, but he’d at least need a crib for each of them and some high chairs at his place before they started staying overnight. Plus, it’d be less stress on them. Until then, he’d spend time with them at Rory’s apartment. They started coming to his apartment for daytime visits when they were about six months old. 

Ollie and Deb were close, as twins tend to be. They searched for each other if they were in different rooms and acted anxious until they caught sight of the other. When Ted set up their room in his apartment, he put their cribs on opposite walls. This proved to be a mistake. At Rory’s, their cribs were side by side, and they often fell asleep touching hands through the bars. Separated by the span of the room meant a lot of screaming and trying to escape at bedtime the first time they stayed overnight. Ted got through the night by rocking them to sleep and putting them in their respective beds once they passed out. However, he was paranoid about them waking in the night and getting hurt trying to climb out of the crib to reach each other, so he ended up sleeping in the rocking chair over the weekend until they went back to Rory.

When he showed up exhausted at work Monday morning, an elderly coworker was concerned and asked what was wrong. When he explained, she called him a dumbass and told him to just put them in the same crib. 

He had an easier time putting them in their own beds as they got older, but it wasn’t uncommon to find them in the same bed in the morning, especially if one was stressed or upset. Ollie was prone to nightmares and Deb was prone to insomnia, and sleeping together seemed to comfort them. And when one another wasn’t enough, he’d wake to find a kid had tucked themselves into each of his arms.

Kids grow fast and they grow independently of each other. That was the second thing he learned. Deb was the first to walk, pulling herself up to her feet by seven months and taking her first steps at eight months, when they started spending the night. According to his parenting books, she walked early. Ollie didn’t have much interest in walking, but he did have an interest in talking. He said his first word around the same time as Deb began to pull up. At first, Ted and Rory thought he was saying ‘dad,’ but when Ted picked him up, he whined and reached for his sister.

They eventually caught up to each other, each picking up the opposite skill at a time that the parenting books said was normal. Deb was still the wild child, always running around the house and preferring to play outside. Ollie was still quiet. He liked playing with educational toys or being read to. Both liked to play pretend as they got older, but they had very different styles of play. Deb liked roleplaying, usually as a pirate or a knight, whereas Ollie would spend hours designing sewers with tinker toys. Ted found it a bit odd, but the kid had fun and his ideas actually made a lot of sense. Whatever they did, the twins did together. Ollie would often play as a dragon or a sea monster that Deb would either fight or befriend, or she would help draw up blueprints for Ollie to build.

Ted and Rory had made plans before the kids were born about how the custody situation would work. Neither had any desire to leave Hatchetfield, nor were they in any kind of job that might require them to move, so they picked a school district to stay within, so the kids wouldn’t have to commute far or miss anything. Rory would get them two weeks out of the month and Ted would get them for the other two. They didn’t put this in place until the twins were older, of course, That would be too much stress on infants and they wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible.

Since they all lived in Rory’s apartment right after the twins were born, that was their main home for the first few years. Ted would come to spend time with them at Rory’s after he first moved out, but they started going to Ted’s during the day when they were six months old, going back to their mom’s place at night. Beginning when they were eight months old, they would stay overnight every other weekend. At age two, they continued this pattern, occasionally staying an extra day, until, at age three, they were able to make the decision themselves to spend more time there, with the understanding that it wouldn’t hurt their dad’s feelings if they got scared or wanted their mom and needed to go back to her. By age five, they were easily spending two weeks at each place and traveling between with little issue.

Deb struggled in school, especially with reading and having to sit still. Her classmates were all beginning to read short books unaided, while she was still having trouble matching the names of letters to their pictures. Several meltdowns and a few meetings with Deb’s teacher about her acting out in class later, they got a referral to a child psychologist. As Deb explained it, letters seemed to move on the paper, and when she wasn’t allowed to move, everything got louder and it was hard to listen to the teacher. It didn’t take long for the psychologist to diagnose her with ADHD and dyslexia.

Apparently, it’s common for both twins to have the same neurological disorders, so the psychologist requested to speak with Ollie as well. In the end, Ollie didn’t have ADHD, but he did get diagnosed with autism.

It was a learning curve, but Ted and Rory wanted what was best for the kids. They fought with the school to stop punishing Deb for being a “distraction” and found an after-school program for kids with developmental and neurological disorders. Both twins continued to see the psychologist, who prescribed medication to help Deb focus. At the recommendation of both the psychologist and the aides at the after-school program, Ted and Rory invested in stim toys. Deb responded best to things she could idly fiddle with, like worry stones and stress balls. Ollie liked textured things. His favorite toy was a rainbow pom ball. Meltdowns were still common, but they became less frequent.

Ollie excelled in school. He consistently tested at a higher reading level than he should have, and his understanding of math far exceeded his classmates’. In class, his mind wandered. He was bored. The afterschool program helped him with that too, by giving him work more on par with his capabilities, thus stimulating his brain. At least, that’s how the teachers explained it to Ted. Ollie seemed happy with his extra work, which was beyond Ted, who always hated school, but if the kid was happy then that was enough for him.

It was around this time that the twins began to acknowledge and understand what being twins meant. Meaning: it was around this time that they watched _The Parent Trap_ for the first time. They were watching TV in the living room from a couch-cushion fort one evening while Ted was making dinner, and when he sent them to wash their hands, they came back giggling, having switched clothes.

Their little scheme didn’t work. Though Deb had tucked her hair into Ollie’s hat, her brother hadn’t magically grown pigtails yet. And Ollie still had his glasses on, because “ _I_ can’t see _without_ them and _she_ can’t see _with_ them, _duh_ , daddy!”

As their appearances and interests formed, as did a new set of nicknames. Nothing to change what they responded to; Deb was still Deb and Ollie was still Ollie. Just little inside jokes between them and Ted. Deb had a head of curly brown hair and, as a child, a smattering of freckles across her nose. Between herself and her brother, Deb at the bigger sweet tooth. This led Ted to dub her ‘Little Debbie Cake’, a reference she didn’t understand until she learned to read. Ollie, ever interested in science, declared at age seven that he would be an astronaut, going so far as to wear a homemade helmet wherever he went for two months straight. Ted affectionately called him Rocket Boy for a while after that. Both would eventually outgrow the names, even if they didn’t outgrow the looks or interests that spawned them, but Ted never fully retired the names, pulling them out for teasing purposes.

As the twins got older, people tended to lump them together. Friends, teachers, and relatives alike. They weren’t Deb and Ollie, they were Deb-and-Ollie, like they were some combined amalgamation instead of two people. This didn’t sit well with Ted. He loved his kids and he loved them individually and he wanted them to understand that they were more than just the other’s twin. From this, Dad-and-Kid Day was born.

Once a week during the time each month that the kids lived with Ted, usually a Saturday, one of the twins would go spend the day with a friend or with Ted’s parents, and the other kid had a whole day where they could do whatever they wanted (within reason) and have their dad’s complete and undivided attention. They would swap the next week, and the other twin would get the same treat. It was during these times, Ted felt, that he really learned who his kids were.

Ollie was a nerd, plain and simple. When strapped in his booster seat and told that they could go anywhere on the island and do whatever he wanted, he begged to go to the museum. Before becoming a father, Ted had never gone to a museum of his own accord. Except for field trips in school, but that was more about being not at school than an actual desire to visit a museum. But for Ollie? For the chance to see him darting around the exhibits, prattling off facts about each sight, both from the plaques in front of the displays and from his own memory of things he’d read, and the biggest grin he had ever seen on the boy, Ted would go in a hundred boring-ass museums. With his son, they were a little less boring. Plus, the gift shops were pretty cool, and if he bought the kid a rock, Ollie looked at him like he was a superhero.

Eventually, of course, Ollie had memorized every exhibit at the Hatchefield Museum of Science and History, and, unless a new exhibit was opened, he was less likely to choose that location on his day. Instead, he’d ask that they walk around downtown Hatchefield and find local curiosities, his favorites being antique stores and old bookshops. Again, more things Ted himself found boring, but were surprisingly fun if he was with his boy.

Something that never altered, no matter what they did or how old Ollie got, was that as his end-of-the-day treat, Ollie always wanted hot chocolate ( _“Hot_ chocolate _, daddy, not hot cocoa. Those are two_ very _different things!” “You’re tellin’ me, kid.”_ ). From the snowiest winter day to the hottest summer afternoon, he wanted hot chocolate, with whipped cream, three mini-marshmallows, and a light sprinkling of cinnamon. Every time, Ted would sip his own drink, tap his whipped cream-coated mustache, and comment, “Gosh, I’m gettin’ old kid, you’re giving me white hairs!” and every time, Ollie would dissolve into giggles.

Deb’s day had a similar tune, if very different themes. Occasionally, she’d pick a movie theater, but that didn’t happen often. Movies were usually a family affair, so she’d only ask to go for her day if it was a movie Ollie didn’t also want to see. More often than not, Deb wanted to go to the park. Deb was like a little monkey, climbing anything she could get a grip on. Monkey bars, rope walls, once she even shimmed her way up the fireman pole. For all his whipped cream-mustache jokes to Ollie, Deb was the one that really turned his hair white. 

Eventually, Deb took notice of the skate park next to the playground, and begged Ted to let her bring her roller skates the next time it was her day. Ted gently tried to explain that it wasn’t really meant for that kind of skating, to which Deb rolled her eyes and answered that there were plenty of flat spots for her to use. They’d get to the park fairly early in the morning so Deb could skate without getting in the way of “big kids”, heading back to the playground when the middle-schoolers and teenagers arrived. Ted noticed, however, she didn’t play on the slides or climbing equipment much anymore, choosing instead to get him to push her on the swings, where she had a full view of the skaters.

For as long as she lived, Deb claims she and Ollie’s best birthday was their tenth, where Ted and Rory surprised her with a skateboard of her own, along with lessons from one of the skaters she admired so much (turns out he was a friend of the twins’ babysitter), and plenty of padding, a helmet, elbow, and knee pads. Rory had managed to talk Ted out of the bubble wrap, but he did keep a first-aid kit in his car, which Deb insisted he stock with the rainbow band-aids. She said they were cooler. By the time the twins turned eleven, Deb was able to keep up with most of the middle-schoolers. Ted still got heart attacks with every trick.

Like her brother, Deb got a treat of her choice at the end of the day. She always wanted ice cream. Ted usually stuck with a plain chocolate cone, whereas Deb would get two scoops of strawberry with about three-too-many toppings. She’d get it in a bowl, where she would proceed to aggressively stir everything together into a smooth batter-like slop before she’d eat it. 

Even as the kids got older, and they got to the age where they’d rather spend a Saturday with their friends, Dad-And-Kid Day still happened, even if it was a little more infrequent.

Ted loved his kids. But still, though he’d never admit it to anyone, especially the twins, given the nature of how they came to be, he did sometimes wonder if they were, in fact, _his_ kids. It wouldn’t matter to him, really. Even if he wasn’t their _father_ , nothing could change that he was their _dad_. And honestly? That was enough for him. 

He didn’t have to wonder long. Deb was almost a spitting image of Rory, but Ollie? The older the twins got, the more Oliver started looking like their cousin, Terry’s son Ethan. If Ted didn’t know better, he’d have sworn that the boys were the ones that were twins.

In middle school, Deb had a goth phase. He sent her off to Rory for two weeks in a pink dress and braided pigtails and received her back, with a warning from Rory, in all black, with a streak of purple chalk in her hair. It gave Ted horrible flashbacks to his own middle school days. Damn, she really was her father’s daughter, wasn’t she? The goth phase didn’t last long, but she never went back to the girly style of her youth, instead preferring baggy shirts with flannels, hoodies, and occasionally even men’s clothes. Ollie came into his own style around the same time and stuck to it. Button-up shirts and slacks. Occasionally, a bowtie and suspenders.

When the twins turned twelve, Rory and Ted decided that it was time they had their own cellphones. They were beginning to go out with friends unsupervised, and they figured it would be a good idea for the kids to have a way to call if they needed something. Plus, Ted’s new job at CCRP came with a nice pay raise, meaning that he could actually a _fford_ to get the kids cellphones. They helped Ted set up their contacts in his phone, each taking a selfie to assign to it, despite the fact that Ted hadn’t assigned pictures to anyone else. With a smirk, he listed them, not by their names, but as “Little Debbie Cake” and “Rocket Boy”, with a cookie and rocket emoji respectively, earning a groan in return.

Deb was fourteen when she came out. Ted had suspected for a while, but wanted her to tell him when she was ready. That day came in the fall, while they struggled over her algebra homework. Ted did statistical analysis for a living; quite literally did math as a career, and his daughter’s freshman algebra homework was kicking his ass just as much as it was hers. It wasn’t his fault, they changed the way they taught math and he didn’t understand it enough to explain it to her.

About an hour in, finally making some progress, Deb slapped her pencil on the table and looked up at her father. “Dad, I like girls.”

Ted nodded, patting her head affectionately. “Cool, me too. Hey, want pizza for dinner to celebrate?”

“Fuck yeah.”

Though Ted never brought them home when he had the kids, he still dated around and had a string of one night stands. No more pregnancies, thankfully. Not that he didn’t enjoy being a parent, but with two teenagers in the house, he decidedly did _not_ have the energy for a new baby. Most girls Ted went out with once or twice, _maybe_ a third time, but, as usual, he never committed to any of them. Until Charlotte.

Charlotte worked at CCRP. She wasn’t his girlfriend by any means. No, she was married, unhappily, but married nonetheless. That didn’t stop her from returning Ted’s flirtations, or from inviting him over whenever her husband was out. She was sleeping with other people too, her therapist, and a few other people that Ted knew of, and he didn’t stop sleeping around either. But while he stopped talking to most of his stands after a few meetings, he couldn’t avoid Charlotte, nor did he want to. So their little affair continued.

Charlotte knew he had children, she was the only one of his coworkers that did, though she never met them. Ted didn’t talk about his life outside of work, but one time Charlotte invited him over and he had to refuse because he had the kids. He couldn’t think of an excuse and ended up spilling the truth. She never brought them up in front of the others, for fear of accidentally letting slip about their affair. 

Ted liked his coworkers well enough. He could get in Charlotte’s pants fairly easily, and Melissa was nice, if a bit naive and squeaky. Paul was someone he’d even consider a friend. Bill though? Fuck Bill. He was annoying and always whining about the delinquent-stoner his daughter was dating. Ted made fun of him for it.

Then Deb, aged sixteen, brought her new girlfriend over for dinner, and Ted was hit with a sobering thought: ‘ _Shit, it’s_ my _delinquent-stoner._ ’

“I’m gonna kick Bill’s ass,” he growled, waiting after Alice had left to vent his rage.

Deb begged him not to, for obvious legal reasons and because Bill didn’t know that Deb was Ted’s daughter. “Bill _cannot_ know, dad, he already doesn’t like me, if he finds out I’m related to you, he might actually stop me from seeing Alice, and…I really like her dad, please don’t ruin this for me.”

Ted made this promise, followed by a discussion of her smoking habits. (“Weed? Well, I can’t say anything, I did the same thing when I was your age. Just don’t drive while you’re high, be careful who you buy from, and _fucking call me_ if you’re ever scared or uncomfortable.”) It was hard to keep this promise, however, when Bill bitched about Deb every goddamn day. He figured Bill would eventually get it through his skull that this wasn’t some puppy love thing he could wait out when the girls celebrated their first anniversary (at a vegan restaurant, courtesy of Deb’s new diet), but no, Bill was still an ass who whined about everything going wrong in his life.

Which was how Ted found out his wife left him, fucking off to Clivesdale and taking Alice with her, right before the kids’ senior year was about to begin.

Ted found Deb sobbing under her covers when he got home, clinging to Ollie like he was the only thing keeping her afloat. He joined the pile, holding them both close as Deb cried the injustice.

She helped Alice pack, wanting to be with her until her very last moments in Hatchefield. She’d overheard Bill, speaking with Paul who was over comforting him, that maybe this would finally break them up. She sniffled piteously, whispering in a hoarse voice, “Why does he hate me so much?”

“Debbie, do you like who you are?” Ted asked.

A sniffle. “Yeah.”

“And you love Alice?”

More tears, “God, so much.”

“Then who gives a shit what Bill thinks?” Ollie piped up, petting his sister’s hair.

“Yeah,” Ted replied, “Fuck Bill.”

Deb gave a watery laugh. “Fuck Bill.”

Much to Bill’s dismay, distance didn’t break the girls up. If anything, it made them stronger. Of course, he had no idea that his ex-wife was more than welcoming to Deb, allowing Alice to invite her over at almost any whim, be it for a movie date, for dinner, or, sometimes, sleepovers.

As Ted looked over his life, he found himself satisfied with where he ended up. He never fell in love with Rory like he knew his parents hoped he would. He had his thing with Charlotte and a busy Tinder profile, so he wasn’t hurting for a hookup. And the kids? Not to toot his own horn, but he did a great job with the kids.

Deb was strong and solid and confident. She knew who she was and she liked that image. Truly her father’s daughter, she was who she was and she didn’t give a fuck who knew it. She’d gotten pretty good with her skateboard, and she’d picked up a passion for art along the way. Armed with her brushes, oil paints, and a Polaroid she’d found in a thrift shop that Ted swore was older than he was, she was gonna take the world by storm. She’d already been accepted into several art schools.

Ollie was still the same little nerd he’d always been. Ted’s future NASA scientist, future first-human-on-Mars. He was smart, a fucking genius as far as Ted was concerned. All that science and space stuff made sense to him. He’d gotten a full ride to fucking _Harvard_. The kid was going places. Not on many dates, but places.

All in all, Ted was happy.

***

When the dead began to sing, Ted was at work. 

He was at work at the office building in the one part of Hatchetfield where he didn’t get signal. So when people starting coming out of Mr. Davidson’s office, singing, with blue shit leaking from their mouths, he had no idea where his kids were. He had escaped, somehow, with Bill and Charlotte, and they made their way down a few blocks, sneaking through alleys and hiding behind dumpsters, desperately trying to get a signal all the while. 

All he had to go on were the plans the kids had told him that morning: Deb was going to chill at home all day and mope about Alice going back to Clivesdale, and Ollie was going to return some books to the library to kill some time before he was supposed to virtually play Dungeons & Dragons with a group of out-of-state friends. 

He was supposed to have been there that night, he was supposed to help Deb with her homework. She did great in her art classes, and had even improved in science, but math still made no sense to her, and Ted had promised to help when he got home. 

He didn’t mean to spend the night at Charlotte’s. He had forgotten that Rory’s job was gonna have her out of the state for most of the month (she’d become a journalist when she completed her degree and she often traveled to write) and so she was dropping the kids off a week early, not remembering until _after_ Charlotte’s sweater was on the floor. He’d only meant to have a few quick rounds and be back in time to help Deb with her homework.

But he’d fallen asleep. He’d fallen asleep and didn’t wake up until five in the morning when Charlotte brought him coffee and offered to cook him breakfast because her husband wasn’t home yet. For the first few sips, he’d completely forgotten the twins were waiting on him at home, that he hadn’t even told them he’d be late, let alone not be coming home at all. But Charlotte was running her fingers through his hair, and his coffee was made exactly how he liked it, and everything was so soft and domestic and felt like a perfect dream.

Then the coffee woke him up and his dream was shattered. He’d leaped from the bed, startling his bedmate and nearly spilling the coffee in his haste to put it on the nightstand. He quickly dressed, muttered an explanation about the kids as he pressed a kiss to Charlotte’s forehead, and bolted out the door. He thought about that the entire drive home. He’d kissed plenty of women, kissed _Charlotte_ plenty of times, but he’d never kissed anyone’s forehead before, barring his own kids. It was too soft and homey and fucking _domestic_ to apply to any of his hookups. But Charlotte wasn’t just a hookup, was she? 

Since the twins were born, he hadn’t slept with anyone more than three times. Anyone except Charlotte. Fuck, how long had they been sleeping together? It had to have been over a year, they started fucking before Deb started dating Alice. Shit, it was closer to two years at this point. Sure, he’d been trying to get Charlotte to leave Sam for a while, but that was because she always got weepy when he yelled at her, not because he liked her and wanted to be with her. He _did not_ have feelings for her.

But that didn’t matter now, running through Hatchefield, ducking into alleys, and trying to avoid anyone leaking blue slime. When they ran into Paul, he was with the crabby Beanies Barista. She said that downtown was fucked, apparently already taken over by the things that bled blue. This wasn’t exactly a comforting development, but he thanked whoever was listening that his house and the library his son preferred were in the opposite direction. 

It wasn’t until later, at the professor’s house, as he made his way from the wreckage of his fight with Charlotte and toward the comfort of booze, that a certain spot in the hallway granted him enough bars for a slew of notifications to come through. There were five texts from Ollie, short one-sentence messages he could read without unlocking his phone. 

_“Hey, dad! The game got delayed because Elena is stuck at work. I’m headed to Beanies while I wait. Have you had your break yet? Want to come?”_

They had been sent at a little after one in the afternoon, a good three hours before, right as all the singing shit started. A little voice whispered, panicked, in his head: ‘ _Ollie left the house. He’s out there in this shit._ ’ Ted tried to shake the voice away. He might’ve noticed what was going on before he got to Beanies. Ollie was a smart kid, if he saw anything weird, he’d get the hell out. 

He scrolled down. Eleven missed calls from Deb, interspersed with texts along the lines of _“Dad, pick up your goddamn phone!”,_ _“Please, something’s wrong and I’m freaking out.”_ , and _“Just tell me you’re okay, please, I can’t get through to anyone.”_ There were so many of them; for a moment he thought she was calling again, the speed of the notifications causing his phone to vibrate like it was ringing. Despite the large amount of missed calls, there were only two voicemails. The first was timestamped about twenty minutes before Oliver’s texts.

 _“Hey dad, I just wanted to let you know that I’m headed down to see Alice off at the station. She called to say goodbye but she seemed upset about something, so I’m gonna go surprise her. I shouldn’t be gone too long, but Ollie’s out too and I didn’t want you to freak out if you came home and the house was empty,_ ” In the background, Ted could hear the door click shut and the lock turn. _“I’ll pick up dinner on my way home; I’m feeling like Chinese tonight. I already got Ollie’s order, so just text me your when you get this. I’ll see you later, dad. Love you!”_

No. No, no no, this wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. With shaking hands, he opened the next voicemail. She had called thirty minutes before now. That was promising, right?

 _“Dad, why won’t you pick up?! Mom’s not answering either, goddammit! Listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but something’s wrong. People are singing and bleeding fucking blue, and I don’t think they’re human, and this sounds fucking_ insane _, but I don’t know what else to call it!”_

God, she was out in this shit. What had she seen? She sniffled in the recording. _“I was on the phone with Oliver and he had been walking to Beanies and I could hear people singing, he thought he got caught in a flash mob, and then he started screaming and the line went dead and… shit dad I think…”_ She let out a broken sob, _“I think Ollie’s gone.”_

Ted’s mind was racing. Ollie couldn’t be dead. That kid survived so much shit. He lived through bullies and teachers who didn’t understand him. He lived through meltdowns and asthma attacks and that time his sugar bottomed out at school, before he was diagnosed, and he passed out in a hallway. He was a kid who never did anything wrong in his life. He read books and played geeky games with his friends and drank too much hot chocolate. He was Rocket Boy, he was gonna work at NASA and build rockets and live out his childhood spaceman dreams. He was Oliver- _goddamn_ -Green and he was gonna go to Mars.

Deb’s watery voice broke him out of his stupor. _“I’m with Alice. She was supposed to be going back to Clivesdale, but I convinced her to get off the bus and come see me because she’d been fighting with fucking Bill again and she was upset and I just wanted to_ help _her. I’m trying to get her to the school, it’s the only place I can think of right now and, shit dad, if anything happens to her it’ll be my goddamn fault.”_

 _“And... Shit,”_ No. God, no. Please, no. _“When we were trying to get out of the bus station, someone grabbed me a-and the fucker_ bit _me.”_ Ted’s face felt wet. _“It was small at first, but it looks really gross and kinda blue now. I don’t know what’s gonna happen and I-”_ She sobbed. Ted’s mind distantly wandered to rainbow bandaids. _“Dad, I’m fucking scared shitless here, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d pick up the g_ oddamn _\- shit, you’re still at work, aren’t you? You won’t get this until, God if you’re even still alive... don’t fucking die, please, I_ listened _to Ollie, and if you- and I don’t know-! Just. Fucking stay out of downtown. I… shit this fucking hurts, just. I’m sorry daddy. I love y-”_

Ted numbly made his way downstairs to the bar. Away from Charlotte and their failed… Relationship? Whatever they had, it was gone now. And, God, the kids… His kids were dead.

Did Deb know? Did she know the bite was a death sentence? Did that even matter now? The voicemail was half an hour ago, was she even still alive at this point? 

His mind wandered to that morning. It was still dark when he’d gotten home, too early yet for the sun to have risen. He tried to sneak into the house, but Deb caught him. She was sitting at the kitchen table, eating cereal, surrounded by textbooks and papers. She had smirked at him, made a joke about how _‘Wasn’t this supposed to be the other way around?’_

He had apologized, promised to try and get off work early to make up for it. Left her his credit card and told her to pick dinner. Ollie had wandered downstairs, bleary-eyed and messy-haired, mumbling something about _‘Hey, I missed you too, why does she get to pick dinner?’_ Deb stuck her tongue out at him playfully. Ted ruffled his curls and promised he could pick dinner the next night. He barely had time to wash the scent of Charlotte’s sheets off his skin and change clothes before he was sprinting out the door, already late for work, taking the toast his daughter offered him, shouting _‘I love you, I’ll see you tonight!’_ as he left.

He stopped at the door to the room he suspected the bar was in, based on the voices inside. Those were his last words to his children: I love you, I’ll see you tonight.

He barged in the room and snatched a bottle of bourbon from Paul’s hand, not even bothering with a glass. Everything felt distant, like he was stuck underwater. Bill was whining about a lack of cherries. He was trying to make a goddamn Shirley Temple, and Ted, already tipsy, tried to pick a fight.  
  
Charlotte died, and her reanimated corpse tried to kill him before the professor shot her. In the span of a few hours, he was confronted by the notion that he might be falling in love for the first time, and then lost everyone he cared about the most.

Then Bill’s phone rang. Alice called him, Alice was still alive. Based on Bill’s side of the conversation, she was just as panicked as Deb had said. It sounded like they made it to the school. Was Deb still with her?

“What’s wrong with Deb?” Bill asked, then immediately instructed Alice to get away. 

She was gone. His little girl was really gone.

And Bill seemed almost relieved about it. Bill had been a massive prick to Deb for as long as he had known her, and now Deb was dead and his daughter was still alive and he was going to get her back.

Ted was too drunk to realize that Bill’s relief came from the fact that Alice was alive, not that Deb was dead. He was too drunk to care. He couldn’t get it trouble with his daughter for kicking Bill’s ass. So he did something he wouldn’t be proud of when he sobered up: he slowed Bill down.

He passed out from the alcohol eventually, waking up to find the professor had gone crazy and was trying to get them all killed. Paul returned, alone. No Bill and no Alice. His heart broke for Alice, she was a good kid and she made Deb happy so he liked her. Bill, he couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck about.

The infected attacked, and like a coward, he left Paul and the barista. He found the army guys that were supposed to save him. He was gonna get out. God, what was he gonna say to Rory?

Then he was shot and blue shit was shoved in his face. But really? He didn’t care. He was dying and he didn’t care. He’d get to see his kids again. And that thought? That thought made him happy.

***

The time loop collapsed with Hatchetfield High. Like, the actual building fell down. Ted didn’t understand exactly what happened, something about ghosts, an interdimensional spider, and some dead lady and living little girl with some kind of magic powers? At least that’s what the agent told him when he came to.

Somehow, the world had gotten caught in a time loop, and Hatchetfield had been at the center of it all. The agent had given him a rundown of what his organization did, made a stupid pun about it. Ted had a hard time wrapping his head around the whole thing. Apparently, monsters and alternate universes and aliens and ghosts were real, and this agency found back against that shit. Hatchetfield was some kinda weird-shit supercenter, like where universes bled together or something. They had an agent with some cosmic power stationed in town, and she used said cosmic powers to keep the weird shit from bleeding out to the rest of the world. It still popped out in other places, “low-level threats,” the guy called it, but apparently if anything got out from here, it’d be world-ending. 

Anyway, this lady died and left the world unprotected from the weird shit. Luckily, she knew of a little girl with a power like hers, but she didn’t know where this little girl was. And weird shit kept leaking out while she looked. So, from beyond the “veil” that separates the living from the dead, she used her powers to create a time loop to protect the world until she could find this kid. The loop started at her death and ended whenever the weird shit leaked out and the agency or the people in Hatchetfield who got wrapped up in the mess failed to save the world. Makes sense, she can’t find the kid if the kid dies in an apocalypse. 

This was the loop where she finally did it. She found the kid, guided her where she needed to be, and stopped the ghosts that had been plaguing the town (and apparently the whole country?) over the past week. The loop collapsed and the lady was able to finally move on, leaving the agency to pick up the pieces.

Apparently, the loop had lasted through multiple threats and the world had ended over and over again, killing pretty much everyone in the world over and over again. They’d come back to life once the loop reset, but now that the loop had collapsed, everyone was being flooded with memories of past loops, causing many people, Ted included, to pass out when it happened. And since there was no loop anymore, whoever had died this time was going to stay dead.

Ted remembered the rush of memories before he passed out. It felt like his brain was burning out of his skull as he was flooded with images of himself and his loved ones dying in horrible, brutal ways, over and over and over. The one with the singing aliens stuck out to him the most. It was the only loop in which he hadn’t been with at least one of his kids when they died.

Somehow, miraculously, none of them had died this time. He woke up in the hospital and Deb and Ollie burst into his room just as the agent finished his explanation. They were a little beat up; they’d been at school but not in the building when it went down, but they were alive. He hadn’t let them out of his sight since then. 

As it was with most of the loops, Rory was out of town when everything went down. She had called when she woke up, having passed out herself. She was stuck in Clivesdale but she promised she’d be the first back into town when they let the bridge to the island back down.

Something else consistent with each loop was that Ted had an affair with Charlotte, and in each loop, he fell for her a little more. He asked about her before leaving the hospital. Her church group was volunteering at the school and she was there when the building came down. She’d been injured pretty badly and still hadn’t woken up, but she was expected to recover. She hadn’t had any visitors. No one had seen or heard from Sam, no one knew if he was still alive or not. Ted knew Charlotte would never leave him; Sam made her believe she deserved his abuse. Ted hoped he was dead.

He hadn’t been allowed to see her. It was family-only at that time. So he left his number and instructions to call him when she woke up with a receptionist and he took his kids home.

That’s where they were now. Home. Ted had made hot chocolate for them, three mini marshmallows with whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The kids built a fort on the living room floor out of couch cushions and they put on a movie. Ted heard the opening of _The Parent Trap_ while he made the drinks.

It was a tight fit to get them all in the fort, mean ted was practically a mattress for two teenagers, but he didn’t care in the least. The movie was almost over and the sun had long since gone down. Ollie was using his lap as a pillow, mostly asleep. Ted was quietly running his hands through his sleeping son’s curls. Deb was tucked next to him, her back pressed against his side as she hugged his arm to her chest. He could hear her texting Alice. They’d had a tearful reunion in the hospital, each having lost track of the other in the chaos. Her parents were both safe, and she was home with them now. Bill hadn’t said anything when the girls ran to each other, clinging to one another like no one else was there. He nodded politely to Ted, seeming to understand why Deb was with him. He didn’t try to pull the girls apart, just let them cry until they were ready to let go. Seems he finally got it.

Deb clicked her phone off and rolled over, slinging an arm around her father’s torso. She’d be asleep soon. Ted watched the credits roll, his own eyes growing heavy. His back was gonna kill him in the morning from sleeping on the floor, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had his ringer on as load as it would go, so he’d know when Charlotte woke up. All he had to do was wait.

He sat with his family. They’d been through a lot of shit. They’d all died, a lot. It was hard to think about, so he tried not to. The agent had given him a card. They had therapists that specialized in weird shit. He’d give them a call in the morning, but for now, he was going to hold his kids a little tighter and try to block out the horrors of the world.

And somehow, he knew they’d be happy again.

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down back in May thinking this would be a nice, month-long little quarantine project. Now here I am, over six months and 10k words later. I have a plan to continue this as a series but who knows if I'll ever find the motivation. Hope you enjoyed it!


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